Phillips Square, The Art Association of Montreal

Phillips Square in 1916

Phillips Square, located across the street from The Bay department store in downtown Montreal, has always interested me. Just down the street from Phillips Square was the studio of the Beaver Hall artists, and it was not a long walk from there to the Art Association of Montreal, located on the northeast side of Phillips Square. Eventually, the AAM became the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts / Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, located on Sherbrooke Street West, and it now has several buildings at that location. The AAM building was opened in 1879; the Museum's "new" building, on Sherbrooke Street, was opened in 1912. I consider the MMFA / MBAM one of the great attractions of the city, one of the great bonuses of living in Montreal, both for tourists and for Montrealers. 

    The land that became Phillips Square was donated to the city of Montreal in 1842 by the widow of Thomas Phillips, a wealthy Montreal businessman. At that time this was a residential area as it remained for many years. However, over time, businesses began to move to this area and the residents moved out. Today the square is being made more user friendly by the city, trees are being planted and the whole square is being renovated (if that is the right word). Unfortunately, condos are also being built in the area, huge ugly monstrosities that dominate the skyline. The monument in the center of the square is a statue of King Edward VII, the British monarch from 1901 to 1910; Edward was the son of Queen Victoria and, as Prince of Wales, he opened the Victoria Bridge in 1860. 

    Here are photographs of the Art Association of Montreal, on the northeast corner of the square.

The Art Association of Montreal

Art Association building, Phillips' Square, Montreal, QC, about 1890

Art Association of Montreal exhibition, 1905

The Art Association of Montreal is on the right, on the left is
Morgan's Department Store, now The Bay

Phillips Square in 1907, the Art Association of Montreal is on the left behind the horse and sleigh 

It's -25 C, feels like -32 . . .

Snow clearing (the dump trucks, snowblowers, sidewalk cleaners have already passed) in progress on what looks like a nice winter day, but it's -25 C and feels much colder. We are breaking records for cold weather, not something any of us want. 

View from our front door.

Saturday afternoon with Auntie Mable

People used to go shopping, to movies, or to restaurants downtown on Friday evenings; they'd go shopping downtown on Saturday afternoons. I remember going downtown with my Auntie Mable (Morrissey) on Saturday afternoons, but memory has a life of its own so perhaps it was only one time or perhaps it was a few times. This was probably around 1960. 

There are several memories from those times. One is shopping at the Woolworth's store located on the corner of McGill College Avenue and Ste. Catherine Street West. This building was demolished years ago and it is now the location of the Montreal Trust building which includes a shopping mall. I remember eating a turkey dinner at Woolworth's and having two chocolate milk shakes on one of those occasions. I think the lunch counter was in the basement but perhaps it was on the main floor; as we left the store I remember Auntie Mable buying lemon squares in a white box tied with string when we left to return home. 

Because of these memories I have collected photographs of that Woolworth's location; the better to remember it. 

Woolworth's is the white building, centre of photo; view of McGill College Avenue
from Place Ville Marie

Interior of Woolworth's, late 1940s; not sure if this photo is of the Woolworth's we visited

Crowded Ste. Catherine Street in early 1960s, Woolworth's on right

Woolworth's on right; these people are crossing McGill College Avenue and walking along
Ste. Catherine Street, the main shopping area of Montreal

The lunch counter at Woolworth's; again, not sure if this is in Montreal where the lunch counter
was possibly located in the basement of the store

Looking east on Ste. Catherine Street; Woolworth's on the left; late 1950s

Egoût collecteur Rivière Saint-Pierre,1933

Here are historical photographs taken on 31 October 1933 showing the burying of the St. Pierre River. The only section of the St. Pierre River still above ground is in Meadowbrook Golf Course and it is slated to be buried. The question is, why? Because it is polluted with fecal matter from incorrectly connected sewer pipes near the golf course? Isn't the common sense thing to do is to stop the pollution, not bury the river? I suppose the cheaper thing to do is to bury the remaining exposed section of the river. But government has a lot of our money they can spend any way they want and common sense isn't something government is known to have. 

This is a section of the St. Pierre River before it was covered but not necessarily the same section as in
the photographs below ...

The Twins' Parade at the Comedy Festival

We used to go to the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival on rue St-Denis (https://www.hahaha.com/en). During the day there were activities, a twins' parade for instance, and twins from all over the province and elsewhere would celebrate their "twinness". It was lots of fun and reminds me of twins I've seen; for instance, two old men, identical twins, who lived on Girouard Avenue and dressed alike, they even had the same white beards. I think the best show I saw at the Comedy Festival was hosted by Dame Edna (John Barry Humphries) in 2005; Dame Edna was brilliant as were the comics she introduced. There was also Whoopie Goldberg (in 2009), and others. For years they rebroadcast these performances on TV; sometimes, to great surprise, you'd see someone you knew in the audience. After the show at Théâtre St-Denis we'd go to an Italian restaurant on the same street, seating was on the second floor and it would be packed with tourists and Montrealers; doors to a balcony, where some people were eating, were left open and you'd see the heads of giant mannequins passing by from the second floor. Outside it was full of people, wall to wall people, everybody eating, talking, laughing, enjoying a summer evening, or watching someone who was painted grey and appeared to be a statue that came to life; these performances, and others, were amazing. The good news is that, all going well, the Comedy Festival returns this summer!

Where Trenholme Park meets de Maisonneuve

De Maisonneuve Blvd West, between Girouard Avenue and West Broadway Avenue, used to be called Western; up to the early-1950s it was a dirt road. It was country-like back then and people would go for walks along Western. From 1950 to 1954 we lived at 2226 Girouard with my grandmother and Auntie Mable, and my grandmother's sister, my Great Aunt Essie. That's seven people in a fairly large flat, but it's still a lot of people. My mother's parents lived at 2217 Hampton Avenue which is a short walk along Western from Girouard. Today, de Maisonneuve is a through street, you take it to avoid traffic on Sherbrooke West; only the stop signs slow people down. There is a bike path and the train tracks running beside de Maisonneuve are used by commuter trains going from downtown Montreal out to the West Island and beyond. The CPR long ago gave up passenger service to other cities on these tracks. 

    Here are some photographs, taken yesterday morning, of de Maisonneuve Blvd at the bottom of Trenholme Park. Trenholme was mayor of NDG when it was a separate municipality from Montreal, now it is part of the NDG-CDN Borough which, by the way, has a larger population than the province of Prince Edward Island but none of the advantages of being a province. k 

    BTW, the streets on either side of Trenholme Park are Park Row East and Park Row West; Sherbrooke Street West on the north and Blvd de Maisonneuve on the south.

Looking south to de Maisonneuve Blvd

Looking north to Sherbrooke Street West

Some of these maple trees must be seventy to eighty years or older

de Maisonneuve Blvd West

The modern 1960s building above is a part of the park; there used to be a skating rink below the building which is where I lost teeth playing hockey...

Good Friday morning on the Loyola Campus

It's quiet here on the Loyola Campus; classrooms are empty, dorms closed, library closed, no students on campus for over a year. 

 

Facing Sherbrooke Street West, chapel on the right

The Vanier Library

Main administration building

The Leonard Cohen memorial mail box

Walking along Westminster Avenue below Sherbrooke Street West, I found a Leonard Cohen decorated mailbox. Must mail all of my letters here. Then on to where the Motel Raphael used to be located, it was demolished years ago and now we have more beautiful condos with a terrific view of train tracks and a highway. Gentrification takes all the character out of a place and is a spreader of ugliness. 

This is the Leonard Cohen Memorial Mailbox, on Westminster near St. Jacques;
it has since been removed.

First Robin of 2021

Walking by Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue

My grandfather, John R. Parker, was captain at Station/Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue back in the 1940s; it was country back then, apple orchards and farmers' fields. My grandparents lived at 2217 Hampton Avenue, near the railway tracks, in a duplex they bought after many years of living in apartments, the last one on de la Montagne where my grandfather was also the janitor. Before Caserne 46 he was at the Central Fire Station, the building is now a museum, in Old Montreal. When my mother was a child she used to walk to the Central Fire Station to deliver my grandfather's lunch to him. One of my grandfather's brothers was at Station/Caserne 11 in downtown Montreal so we have two firemen in the family and we're proud of them. Whenever I walk by Caserne 46, or I see the big red fire engines moving through the streets, I think of my grandfather and I think of the brave fire fighters in the Montreal Fire Department (now the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal).